Chapter 17. Monophthongs and syllable structure

In this paper we argue that the system of Frisian monophthongs should be divided into two sets according to their phonotactic behaviour: a set of monopositional monophthongs and a set of bipositional monophthongs. Furthermore we show that this division in positional terms does not correspond systematically to phonetic length. Both properties, phonological length (position) and phonetic length (duration) play distinct roles at the phonological level. Finally we discuss some consequences of this division in terms of phonological length (position) for Frisian syllable structure.